"Here's the coal badge." Roark handed me the badge. "Although you fought without honor, I'll have to admit you and Ralts worked hard."

Roark didn't smile, his expression was calm but I could tell he was seething.

The badge was pretty boring looking, the design was similar to a Pokémon emblem but dirt brown instead of red and white.

I put it in the badge case, only 7 more to go.

"Honor?" I raised my eyebrow at Roark, "Not everyone is strong enough to afford being honorable."

Roark stayed silent.

Ash jumped over the edge of the battlefield and ran towards me followed by his Pikachu.

"That was so awesome!" He cried out once he reached me. "Your fighting style is so weird but at the same time so cool!"

I chuckled, "Yeah, I try to be different."

"Ralts." Ralts sleepily murmured her own name as she was lying in my arms.

"Your Ralts is amazing too," Ash complimented my Pokémon.

Ralts nodded and tried to give me a hug but she couldn't muster the energy to twist her body in the right angle.

"Well, I should go to the Pokémon Center to heal Ralts." I said and Ralts nodded satisfied.

"Yes, my Pokémon needs to rest as well." Roark turned towards Paul who was sitting at the tribune. "Do you mind if we battle later? That counts for you as well Ash."

"No problem at all," Paul answered the same way I would tell someone to die.

Either Roark didn't notice or didn't care because he turned to Ash who smiled and said, "I can wait."

Ash gave me a sly grin, "You're going to watch my battle too Dust?"

I did want to see him battle, knowing that this was the same person who placed eight in the Kanto League and just won the Battle frontier if I'm correct. If this world was following the rules of logic Ash's Pikachu should be stronger than the anime and be a sight to behold.

"Yeah, if you're okay with it I would love to see your Pikachu in action."

Ash smiled brightly. "You can trust us, it's gonna be awesome!"

"Pika!" The yellow mouse Pokémon exclaimed, slamming his fist together while small bolts of electricity came to life around his cheeks.

"You're really good at battling," Dawn said as she and Brock made their way towards us. She gave Ralts a smile. "The way you strung attacks together was amazing and that final blow too!"

She turned her blue-grayish eyes to me, her expression turned serious for a second. "Have you considered Contest Battles?"

I hadn't.

To be honest I totally forgot they existed until I had been working on reconstructing and remembering the anime timeline.

The games and anime mostly focused on Gym battles and the Contest battles totally slipped my mind, although Contest battles seemed to be less important in this world; the League preferred the Gym battles over Contest battles.

"I think I'm unfit for Contest battles," I said thoughtfully, "True I love dramatics and elegance but when push comes to shove I resort to efficiency and I will use any means necessary."

I thought back to Flo's Metapod who Ralts tried to drown, that shit probably wouldn't give me points with the judges.

"Raralts," Ralts said.

"Yeah, I also promised Ralts we would become the best in the world so Contest battles don't fit that particular goal."

Dawn gave me a nod, she seemed to be disappointed.

"Besides," Brock cut in. "If Dust would enter Contest battles as well your odds of winning would become even lower."

Wow, Brock, way to go.

Though he was right of course.

Dawn paled visibly and I couldn't help but to chuckle.

"Yeah good point." Dawn said while scratching the back of her head.

"Welp," I said, "Gotta go, sayonara and shit."

Honestly I had not much more to say and I wanted to avoid talking about my strategies and attack patterns, so it was better to let all the side characters get over it and get back later once they don't care about it anymore.

They waved me off and Ralts waved back from behind my back, being her usual cute self.

The Pokémon Center in Oreburgh City was conveniently placed near the Gym, probably because first aid wasn't a luxury with a Gym in town.

Inside I met a girl sitting behind a long white desk, though sitting was a broad term. She sat on a swivel chair with her legs on the desk, tapping away at this world's version of the smartphone.

The girl had blue hair which made her the first person I've seen in this world with blue hair too. Mmm, James from Team Rocket has blue hair too, does he exist?

It was a tricky question since the Team Rocket that chased after Ash were kinda illogical and this world loves logic and self correcting itself if necessary.

On the other hand, they were an essential part of Ash's journey.

If they did exist and the anime timeline was at play they should be at the museum right now. I could try looking for them but I didn't feel like doing something active at the moment. I felt drained.

Well, I suppose Dawn also had blue hair, though it was much closer to a shade of black or cyan than mine was.

"Sup," I greeted the blue haired girl, "My Ralts needs fixing."

She looked up from her phone, gave me a curious look and then proceeded to tap something on the computer before returning to her phone.

A Chansey with a hospital bed came through one of the many doors and took Ralts.

I told her to rest and said my goodbyes.

After that I claimed a room for the night and dumped all my stuff in the corner and opened my laptop and sat down on my bed.

I wrote down everything that had happened during the battle for later analysis.

This Gym battle had been quite the challenge but we pulled through, of course it wasn't fair but this time Fate was working in my favor for once.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

The next Gym battle would be against Gardenia, the grass type Gym leader. I was not sure how she would fight but if she fought like she did in the anime then it would be very easy to defeat her because almost all of her moves relied on the weather.

Ash had managed to turn the tables by simply abusing the weather to his own advantage, if he could do that then I could just pick a stormy day to challenge her...of course this required some more thought but I hadn't bothered with that yet.

When I was done with writing everything down I noticed it was getting late and ordered some pizza.

Ralts should be up and running very soon and we should celebrate our victory with food.

When I was done with that I decided to check up on the news and listened to the radio to kill some time.

And it turns out, not much was going on in the world.

The most notorious news reports were a string of murders in Ilex Forest and a woman in Kalos who made a machine that could attract meteors from space and threatened to take a city hostage.

Of course the local League didn't agree with that and sicced the local Gym leader on her.

So yeah, not much going on in the world of Pokémon.

There was a brief mention of Unova and Kanto continuing their support to Sinnoh in their pursuit to take down the infamous A level threat known as Hunter J.

They were apparently forming a squad to take her down the moment she popped up somewhere.

I thought it was pretty stupid to announce it publicly but then I realized they must have done it for morale and faith in the system.

"Ralts is ready to be picked up." Pokédex Lady suddenly announced and I closed the laptop to pick her up.

Going down the stairs I found her waiting in the lobby, sitting on one of the big couches.

"Raalts!"

A white meteor shot towards me and did a Hug Attack.

I caught her and she giggled. She began squirming in my arms, trying to hug me as much as possible.

"Glad to see you're doing alright." I laughed.

{Adoration} A weird sensation popped within my head.

I blinked.

Ralts blinked.

"Wut?" I muttered.

"Ralts?" She said in the same tone.

"Did you do that?" I asked.

Ralts nodded, surprised, I put her down and scanned her with my Pokédex.

"New moves learned are Teleport and Psybeam." Pokédex Lady began. It was cool to see she had learned new moves but I kinda was wondering what the hell just happened.

I began to look up information on Telepathy, I found a short description that wasn't really useful. The longer explanation however held the clues I needed.

I put my Pokédex away and turned to face Ralts who was patiently sitting on the couch, slightly blushing for some reason.

I knelt down to meet her on eye level. "It seems that you are starting to develop Telepathy."

"Raaalts?" She drew out. Her reply.

She tilted her head and closed her eyes.

A feeling appeared in my head, though it was clearly not mine.

The feeling itself was hard to describe, it was almost like a message instead of an emotion but it was an emotion, just not mine which was probably the reason why the message was so weird.

{Confusion}

She opened them and squealed in surprise.

"Yeah," I laughed, "Apparently the skill to talk to others telepathically starts with basic stuff like emotions and shiz, after that it develops into words and sentences."

I had hoped that she would be able to speak full sentences but I guess it took some time, it was logical but very annoying.

"Ralts," She muttered, sounding disappointed.

I petted her on the head. "Don't worry about it. Small steps to great heights, remember?”

{Satisfaction} Ralts smiled brightly.

I carried Ralts up to our room and we shared a big pizza to celebrate our victory.

Telepathy was a nice addition to Ralts' moveset, sure it needed some time to develop but I was satisfied nonetheless.

Ralts had finally learned Teleport and now she was also learning Telepathy.

It seemed that Telepathy started out as emotional projecting and would later develop into full speech which I was okay with. Teleport and Telepathy both had massive potential. It might take some time to fine tune both but if everything would work as I had hoped those two attacks might become OP.

Of course I was shooting for the long game.

One day Ralts would become a Gardevoir and I want her to be on par with a Legendary at that point, not by sheer strength but by being able to outplay her opponent.

That is of course assuming I'm not dead by then.

"Beep...beep...beep." The Pokédex suddenly began beeping.

"Ralts?" Ralts said, holding a pizza slice that was way too big for her.

"Yeah," I stared at my Pokédex like it was some kind of bomb. "What the fuck?"

"You are being called by Professor Rowan." The slightly mechanical voice of Pokédex Lady announced.

I stared aghast at my Pokédex. "That's my ringtone?"

"Correct."

I hadn't been called before, I called other people. Not that I did that a lot but still, I had never heard my ringtone before and it was apparently a dumb beeping sound that was very similar to an alarm clock or a timebomb.

"We should definitely change that," I muttered.

"Right now? You are being called, are you aware of that?"

"Yeah," I rolled my eyes. "Let's do that later, also don't get too snarky Oracle."

I flipped the Pokédex open and Ralts lay down next to me, choosing to abandon the pizza slice in order to find out what was going on.

"Sup Professor Rowan," I answered the video call.

The Professor in question was sitting in his own laboratory, surrounded with techy metal stuff that probably served a purpose.

He was still wearing his lab coat over a brown vest, his white hair was slightly messy and I could see sweat on his forehead.

Professor Rowan also didn't look very happy.

"Hello Dust," He calmly greeted me. "Good to see you again."

"Yeah you too," I said, "So how are you doing?"

"Working as always," he replied.

The conversation quickly died down after that and it became really awkward for me because I had no idea what to say.

"So," Professor Rowan finally said, "I see you got your first Gym badge."

"Ralts." Ralts said smugly, directly after that I got another mental message.

{Happiness}

"What she said." I grinned.

Professor Rowan nodded thoughtfully, like I said something deep.

"Dust, I actually wanted to thank you for what you did in Jubilife City, not a lot of people would have gone through so much trouble just to deliver a package."

"Everything for science." I smiled. "Also, Crimson was a big moron."

"Well, I'm grateful for it all the same," he said and it sounded genuine.

"Sure," I replied, "So that's what you called for?"

"I wanted to discuss something with you."

I raised an eyebrow, "Okay, what's the matter?"

Rowan sighed, "I see that you still only have one Pokémon, any particular reason for that?"

"Combination of bad fortune and not finding the one," I answered.

The Professor nodded, "You asked me some time ago if I had a Pokémon for you, one I couldn't take care of."

"Yes I did."

"Well right now I have a Pokémon who needs a trainer to take care of her," he said and I resisted the urge to smile. "I would do it myself but I fear that I'm not the right person to do that."

Now it is getting interesting.

"Why is that?"

Rowan coughed. "The Pokémon in question was orphaned very recently and she was sent to me but right now she is misbehaving and I am unable to give the support she needs."

"Ow," I said, "That sounds...tragic."

"What happened was indeed a tragedy," Professor Rowan said, sounding sad. "I was about to send it to someone else who might take better care of her but then I recalled your request and I thought maybe you could take care of her?"

I gave him my brightest smile. "If there's a Pokémon who needs my help I am certainly willing to do whatever I can."

"Great," Professor Rowan let out a sigh of relief. "You can pick her up in Twin Leaf town as soon as possible."

"Cool." I said, "Then I'll come by immediately."

Sorry Ash, seems like Fate has other plans in store.

"So what kind of Pokémon is it actually?" I asked.

Professor Rowan gave me one of his rare smiles. "That's a secret young one but I think you'll like it."

And with that he cut off the video call.

I turned to Ralts and beamed, "Guess who's getting a new team mate?"

{Annoyance} was the emotion Ralts sent back.